Marvel Comics Editor Explains Why Marvel Isn’t Interested in Doing More Crossovers

RELATED: DC vs. Marvel Superhero Crossovers Return to Print for First Time in Decades: Omnibus Overview

“Marvel isn’t all that interested in doing a lot of crossovers,” Marvel Comics VP and Executive Editor Tom Brevoort explained in his Substack newsletter. “DC for the last several years has seemed much more open to doing them. But whenever Marvel does participate in one, there tends to be some reason for this internally, some objective that making a crossover helps us to achieve.”

The X-Men editor continued, “But each circumstance is different, so I can’t tell you why we do each and every one, nor which instances came from Marvel reaching out to others and which ones were the result of others reaching out to us.”

While DC has consistently published at least one intercompany crossover every year since 2015 — everything from Conan the Barbarian (Dark Horse) to Power Rangers (Boom!) and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW) — Marvel has participated in significantly fewer crossovers with outside companies. Especially when compared to the output of the ’90s and 2000s, when the Marvel Universe crossed over with the likes of X-O Manowar (Valiant) Backlash and Deathblow (Image), Witchblade (Top Cow), Invincible (Skybound), and Red Sonja (Dynamite).

Ultraman X Avengers and Ultraman: Along Came a Spider-Man, collaborations between Marvel and Tsuburaya Productions, hit stands earlier this year — a decade after 2014’s Avengers/Attack on Titan — and followed Predator vs. Wolverine in 2023 and Predator vs. Black Panther and Aliens vs. Avengers in 2024. Many of the Marvel/DC crossovers have returned to print for the first time in decades in the just-released first volume of the DC Versus Marvel Omnibus.